


Penelope and Odysseus

by Simply8Steps



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Happy Before it All Turns to Angst, New Caprica, canon-typical angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-28
Updated: 2017-05-28
Packaged: 2018-11-05 23:15:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11023620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Simply8Steps/pseuds/Simply8Steps
Summary: Tales once told are told again...





	Penelope and Odysseus

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on LJ on 10/13/2008.

Five years of peace if not perfect happiness, and all it took was a moment for it all to disappear.

 

* * *

 

 

_War came upon the tail of love and treachery, and the men of Greece were called to battle by the king of city-state Mycenae, Menelaus, to whom they had vowed their loyalty._

Galactica had acted as New Caprica’s sentry for three years before Baltar called for its retirement, asserting that its constant presence was a bleak reminder of their lives before settlement on this (undeniably bleak) land. Progress had been slow, corruption rampant, and the President a drunk and addict, true, but slowly and steadily, lives began anew on the rocky soil. By the third year of settlement, the upper “classes” of survivors had managed to attain little wooden houses, not mansions but still better than the “slums,” the remnant city of tents, which remained. That year, the old battlestar landed, and its old Admiral took one look at the settlement before turning away, heading towards the woods on the outer fringes, heading for the clearing that still stood in his memory so vibrantly.

A star-filled sky, dancing grasses, and the flow of red material around lithe, bare legs… the images had remained living in the deepest recesses of his heart, and as he walked the path up to the small cabin, one that he had spent his vacations working on until he could finally call it home (for two), a grin broken out as he caught the waltzing figure watering in the small garden patch.

 _This was home. His book on happiness._ The figure turned, smile bright, and ran as her eyes locked onto his.

_This was his heart, finally whole._

 

They had two years of a blissful, relatively domestic life. He worked with the settlement’s guard – purely administrative he promised her – and she continued teaching the children, their hope for the future. There were no official rites, no ceremony, but that mattered little. All he needed was waking to her every morning, the smell of her New Caprican coffee when he got out of the shower, the nights bundled together under stars that were purely stars (not metal ships), and the melding of their voices in laughter.

Everything to be had was had.

Until fires burnt the sky, and a small cylon troupe landed declaring that they wanted cooperation, wanted peace, wanted the settlers’ aid in their Cylon civil war – _“after all, we’re fighting for_ you…”

“We love you,” the cylons declared. It was a love, twisted and manipulated until it was barely recognizable.

Cooperation meant a draft of any former military personnel; cooperation meant crying mothers and abandoned spouses and handguns (literally as she remembered the sound of the Centurions’ transforming mechanisms) pointed to heads and orders to march to ships and grounded Vipers; cooperation meant almost certain death in a useless war.

Cooperation meant a good-bye that he never wanted to say.

* * *

 

_The wily Odysseus, however, tried to avoid the calls of a pointless war for a jealous king, reluctant to leave his family, the wife he loved dearly and their new born son, behind. He feigned madness but failed for he loved._

Bill was in all truth too old, too exhausted, too everything to fight again. He was the philosopher king, unwilling to return to the toils of a war so hopeless. The cylons wanted his experience, wanted his pride (wanted a symbol, a martyr if necessary). His logic was repelled as they exploited his weaknesses (“You would abandon your son? Your daughter-in-law? You would allow your ‘wife’ to die because you were a coward?”). Mercilessly, they drove each point home.

_How can you imprison the colony’s head teacher if you’re calling for cooperation!_

_Because she is acting as an obstacle._

In the end, they had one goodbye, and he was back in command for the human military force. Left with only a promise that she would wait for him – and a promise that he would come back.

* * *

 

_As time passed, suitors flocked at beautiful Penelope’s doors. In order to pacify, she promised to choose among them when she finished weaving a funeral shroud. Each day she worked, and each night, she would undo the work of the day. Cycling and cycling until her deception was discovered._

People began turning to her again; Laura, President of the people’s hearts. Her own heart however had yet to recover, but she stood as always, her face a façade to calm the people. She continued teaching, comforting the children as best she could.

They asked from her, and she gave. (It was times like these that made her miss Billy and his smile even more.) Each day, the sisters fate wove more of their tapestry, each thread leading towards their destiny – death, the end for the entirety of living, and each night, she fought to unweave a bit more of that fabric, just a bit more time.

A bit more time for the people to live, a bit more time for him to return, a bit more time for her to cry, a bit more time for _them_ …

* * *

 

_Odysseus, after long years of weary traveling, returned to Penelope, slaying all suitors, and in a way, the gods granted them a fruitful conclusion. Then again, there’s reason why a myth is a myth, barring whatever truth may lay there._


End file.
